1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the Internet field and, in particular, to an Internet system and method for selecting a server located the closest to a user when multiple servers provide the same service (e.g., mirror servers) or slightly adapted variants of the same service (e.g., alternative servers).
2. Description of Related Art
The number of users accessing the Internet is growing exponentially which presents new challenges for service providers to reduce response times by developing new ways to distribute the increasing load. One such way to distribute the load is to use mirror servers located throughout the world. Each mirror server functions to store a copy of the same web site and as such can service a request by any user.
Consequently, the service providers have developed various schemes to select a particular mirror server to service the request of a user. For example, a round robin scheme has been used where the mirror servers are assigned to address the requests of the users on a rotational basis regardless of the load on any of the mirror servers. Other more sophisticated schemes have also been used, such as load-balancing schemes which attempt to select a particular mirror server based on load distribution requirements, or timing schemes which select a particular mirror server based on time of day or day of week requirements. Unfortunately, none of the current Internet systems take into account the geographical distance or number of routers located between each mirror server and a particular user to select a mirror server (or the source server) located relatively close to the particular user. Of course, the selection of a close mirror server (or the source server) should reduce the response time required to process a request by the particular user. In addition, it would reduce the overall network load by reducing the number of routers that are traversed by the IP packets.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and Internet system that improves the response times by selecting for use a mirror server (or the source server) located relatively close to a particular user. This need is equally relevant for the task of selecting the closest of multiple distributed servers that provide essentially the same service, but may be slightly adapted for local service, that is, alternative servers that are not true mirror servers. These and other needs are satisfied by the Internet system and method of the present invention.